About
Welcome to Our Longevity Diet. On this site we plan to give you a day by day description of our intermittent fasting diet — so you can see how it affects our weight, health and lifestyle. We began this diet one month before starting this blog, and have been so encouraged by the initial results that we want to share our experience with everyone who is interested.
Experiments show that animals live longer if their diets are restricted. Surprisingly, recent research has demonstrated that that longevity effect — plus other health benefits not seen in calorie-deprived animals — may be obtained through simple fasting. Animals fed for 24 hours, then given nothing but water for 24 hours, lived just as long as the calorie restricted animals, plus they had lower rates of diabetes, cancer and other health problems. Yet they ate just as many total calories as animals allowed to each as much as they wanted! Human tests have shown that fasting improves blood sugar levels and other short-term indicators of health, and there is every reason to believe that sustained intermittent fasting will improve human longevity as well — though the practice has not been around long enough to test that assumption scientifically.
Intermittent fasting is simply going without eating for a fixed time period, then eating for a fixed time period, and repeating that pattern over and over. Our intermittent fast is not exactly like others have tried; it is much easier to follow. We eat a normal dinner every day between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. On alternate days we either eat breakfast before that meal, or have a night-time snack. The night with no-snack precedes a day with no breakfast, so in effect we fast for 23 hours, then eat normally for 26.
We decided on this pattern rather than a strict 24/24 because we are creatures of habit, and want to eat dinner about the same time every day. We live in Mexico, where the main meal of the day is typically eaten in early afternoon, so we already were accustomed to eating at that time. We simply skip breakfast on alternate days, and skip evening snacks on the days we do eat breakfast. Thus we have a normal full meal and a smaller meal or snack every day. The timing makes this a satisfying and sustainable diet/lifestyle — it is not difficult at all. Science suggests the fasting will improve our health, and hopefully increase our longevity. Follow our progress on this blog; let’s see what happens!
